JEDDAH, 10 July 2003 — A man will approach you, acting lost. He will ask for directions. When you are not looking, he picks up a bunch of bills from the sidewalk as if they just fell from the sky.
He will then coax you to come with him to a corner to divide the find. But if you go with him, you will be in trouble.
Out of nowhere a car will appear. The driver will ask the man who approached you earlier if he saw money on the street. The first man will deny he saw anything and then point to you. The driver will demand to see your wallet. If you oblige and he sees your wallet, he will accuse you of taking his money, and then he will rob you.
This happened to an expatriate who works in the Industrial City some months ago. His mistake was to show his wallet to the men. He had just withdrawn his salary, and they took it away from him.
They attempted to pull the same scam on another expatriate some days later, but they were unlucky. For one thing, the expatriate carried no cash in his wallet. Secondly, he was standing in front of the Kodak building on Madinah Road, a place he knew well.
Moreover, the expat had been warned: He had heard stories of the scam, and he told the man who found the money to count it there and then.
A car appeared from nowhere, and the driver asked to see the expat’s wallet. The expat refused. He told the two men that if they showed him their ID, he would oblige. The driver then pointed to the expat’s bag. It was a laptop, and the expat refused to let the men look at it. They threatened him, but their threats seemed rather ineffectual, the expat told Arab News.
“They went after me, but they didn’t look very dangerous, so I faced them off.
“Still, watch out for con artists,” he added.
